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ICE shooting comes after bombshell probe finds new recruits 'can barely read or write'
(www.rawstory.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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I mean... a good chunk of the US (and apparently also at least Western Europe) can't read or write. That is a sadly normal problem at this point. And the rest? We actively teach kids to pattern match and "guess" what the other words are from the ones they recognize. Think about that the next time it is painfully obvious that someone replying to you didn't read what you actually said.
A friend who teaches middle school has come to accept that a good chunk of why their students (and presumably the adult populace) flock to "AI Assistants" is that it is literally giving them text to speech and putting things into a format they understand. Which... combined with the tendency towards hallucination and overly praising the user is fucking horrifying.
Unless you're talking about something totally different, that just sounds like using roots and context clues – a normal, healthy, and constructive way of understanding language.
No. They are talking about how phonics and “sounding out” words wasn’t taught for a while. It was a very damaging fad in academics. It produced a generation of kids who cannot read and cannot spell.
Very similar to what happened with “new math” mess of the 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
For meaning? Yes. For the actual words being written? No
https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading is from the perspective of someone comparing it to their own reading disability that has plagued them throughout life.
The alarming stat is that 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they unable to complete basic reading tasks.
Over half of the adults read below sixth grade level.
https://www.nu.edu/blog/49-adult-literacy-statistics-and-facts/
Yes, I call that learning to read. Upside down and without vision correction, sometimes, because you are pretending to be someone without glasses, this is a profoundly useful skill. But also yes, just learning to read is you know, good.
I like what you wrote and it also gave me a chuckle.